Engraver perfect for a shop or your home

Dremel Engraver: The 10 Minute Review
I spent a little time using the Dremel 290-01 engraver around the ol' IT office today. I needed to mark a couple of nice little Olympus digital voice recorders with a ToolBarn.com engraving, just in case they walked away. The cases were an ABS plastic type case, and the engraver did a great job on a setting on 1 (out of five speed settings). While it buzzes a little like a very annoying old alarm clock, it is quite easy to write clearly on settings one through three.

Four and five are very strong impacts and can jump around on the surface you are engraving if you aren't careful. Of course, since I wanted to try it out a little more I decided I would try them out on the Irwin Vise-Grip bent-nose pliers that we have come to cherish up in the IT office. The pliers are nickel chromium steel, so I figures I'd try a five setting first. It did a great job of marking them, but I wasn't able to keep the fine control I wanted. So I flipped them over and tried it on 3. Still a nice strong marking, but this time, I was able to maintain finer control.

For a tool under $20, the engraver gets a big thumbs up from me. If it were over $25, then I might complain a bit more about the volume of the tool in operation. As it is, don't use it around (or on) a sleeping baby, and you should like it just fine.

Holey spade bits! Someone's yanking my cables.

To answer the first question you all have. Yes, I am easily entertained.

So, do you ever look close at your trusty spade bit and wonder why there is a hole near the tip? It can't do anything appreciable for cooling down a hot blade. It isn't big enough to fit on a nail or a pegboard hook to hang it up in your shop. What in the wide, wide world of sports is it there for? (For best results read that last question as if you were Slim Pickens in Mel Brook's classic Blazing Saddles.)

The hole in the bit is for a wire puller. A wire puller is a little mesh sleeve with a snap hook on one end. The mesh sleeve fits over the wire or cable you are wanting to bring through your hole. The sleve tightens as it is pulled on, much like those finger traps you see from time to time in the movies and gag gift shops. You simply drill your hole with a long spade bit, hook the wire pulling grip to the bit as it sticks through the hole and pull up the drill and cable all at once. (I'll add some more links as we get more of these kinds of products in from Greenlee)

The wire puller holes appear in every spade bit we carry, the photo above shows two very different spades, one self-feeding spade bit from Greenlee and a RapidFeed Spade bit from Bosch. Greenlee also makes some other nice products including flexible combination bits that are three feet and longer with the cable pulling holes. To the left is a picture of one pulling cable through a floor between some studs in a wall.

All said, my life as a the IT director at ToolBarn could have been made a lot easier if someone had shared that little secret with me. Hopefully, someone else will read this and find that there is a better way.

To see our selection of spade bits visit our Wood Bore bits group.